Otherweb Raises Quality of Public Discourse with Discussions Feature

Platform gives more than 7 million users a judgment-free zone for respectful dialogue

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Social media became the de facto town square because comment sections on traditional news sites don't provide a good user experience for lively discussion. Yet the quality of discussion on social media leaves much to be desired as fake claims go unchallenged, and misinformation abounds. As a result, users are forced to choose between lively discussion or high-quality information, not both.

Otherweb, an AI-based platform that filters out junk, removes sensationalism, and cuts out excessive outrage for a high quality news experience, has introduced a new feature called “Discussions.” This new feature fuses the engagement of social media with the journalistic integrity only professional reporting can provide.

The new feature raises the quality of public discourse as Otherweb’s more than 7 million users discuss the news and understand the world together. Otherweb weeds out trolls and instigators that usually poison social media, and archives messages after seven days so they can’t be dug up years later and used against the author.

“Social media has become a dangerous place to voice your beliefs amid outrage and petty point-scoring that drives us further apart,” said Alex Fink, CEO and Founder of Otherweb. “With Discussions, we’re reinventing online discourse to bring people together based on facts, not widely peddled fictions. The seed of each thread is substantive reporting, which provides a solid foundation and allows users to communicate based on a shared reality.”

“Discussions” promotes a lively and healthy discourse that always begins with a high-quality, human-produced article, video, or official statement. Otherweb users can then interact based on that content with features like threaded discussions, upvotes and downvotes, sharing, and following.

Through this new feature, Otherweb has protected the ability to exchange ideas and comments respectfully, without the threat of someone plucking years-old comments out of context and misconstruing them. Otherweb uses the following safeguards to protect the integrity of Discussions:

• Users can only access a discussion channel after demonstrating interest in this channel through their in-app reading habits.
• “Discussions” doesn’t have a general search functionality, so no third-party can dig into the history of a user’s messages; even registered users can’t just browse channels they aren’t participating in.
• All messages are automatically archived within seven days.
• Users can only access archived messages if they have actively participated in the discussion thread these messages were a part of.

Learn more about Otherweb and its quest to deliver the news without the noise.

About Otherweb

Otherweb is operated by a public benefit corporation that improves the quality of news consumption by filtering out junk and removing sensationalism and excessive outrage. Its web- and app-based platform aggregates the latest news from hundreds of trustworthy sources, allowing users to customize their experience and control their feeds. Twenty cutting-edge AI models filter out misinformation, disinformation, propaganda and clickbait, and allow users to customize what they consume and in what order. The source code of all their models and datasets is open for public audit to provide full transparency and no hidden biases. Learn more at otherweb.com